Everything’s in place.
The Rudd pre-Restoration baggage has been papered over, ignored, blamed on Gillard, or flatly denied. Corruption is the fault of the NSW Right, or in receipt of lip service with sanctimonious references to due process. No one can possibly be found guilty by the DPP until well after the election, so everything is sweet. Rudd and Bob Carr deny even knowing Eddie Obeid exists. They and the rest of Labor have closed the windows, pulled down the shutters and slammed the doors on ‘Fast Eddie’: no one has ever heard of him, let alone benefited from his corrupt influence, even though ICAC found that he practically ran NSW by himself. Macdonald, Slipper, Thompson, Kinghorn, Duncan, Tripodi: like Dante’s ninth circle of hell, the list of the Labor damned goes on, but nothing to do with Rudd, our Emperor in-waiting.

Incompetence belongs to Gillard’s reign. The worsening economy blamed on the global recession. Period. Rudd hiring two of his sons for the campaign – blatant nepotism – pooh-pooed and dismissed. The horror Carbon Tax renamed to something else. Too easy.

Except for those bleeding hearts with whom everyone is fed up, the refugee issue is now mostly out of sight and out of mind, swept away under the remote PNG and Nauru carpets. For a vote-winning solution to sustain Rudd through the course of the election campaign, it seems perfect. Issues arising during the campaign – such as suicides, riots, rape and inmates buggering each other or burning the place to the ground again etc – will be put down to teething-problems. Tony Burke and his bountiful team ensuring heaps of sweeteners and cash are splurged to keep Peter O’Neil and Baron Waqa voicing concern about Muslim refugees being implanted in their overwhelmingly Christian countries. The two leaders will both be long dead before the future Islamist nightmare starts to slowly scream, and then it will be blamed on Australia: so everything’s hunky-dory.

The TeamObama spin doctors have long been here, on the ground, sniffing around, homing in on Abbott’s jugular. Time now for Rudd to beam again. Put on that big, prissy, vacuous smile of his and meet the Governor General.